BACKGROUND The process of human response to natural disasters and its mechanisms as revealed by historical events still has a broad significance for modern society. This study analyzed the disaster relief process and the social response for two floods in China: the Yongding River flood in 1801 and the Yellow River flood in 1841. These two floods reflect the different response processes between ...

UNLABELLED Introduction During disaster relief, personnel's safety is very important. Mental well being is a part of this safety issue. There is however a lack of objective mental well being monitoring tools, usable on scene, during disaster relief. This study covers the use of validated tools towards detection of psychological distress and monitoring of mental well being of disaster relief wor...

Much of the gender and disaster literature calls for more gender-sensitive disaster relief and research by focusing on the ways in which women are more vulnerable in a disaster or on their unique capabilities as community leaders or natural resource managers, which are often overlooked or underutilised in emergency management strategies. As well as seeking to overcome the (strategic) essentiali...

In humanitarian relief operations (HRO), due to the excessive number of relief organizations, multiple organizational coordination is a demanding and complicated task. Considering such a problem, this paper proposes a two-phase mechanism to coordinate multiple heterogeneous relief organizations in a decentralized HRO logistics network. To address such a problem, first a bi-level mixed integer l...

In disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in Japan, people used social media to ask for help or report injuries. The popularity, efficiency, and ease of use of social media has led to its pervasive use during the disaster. This creates a pool of timely reports about the disaster, injuries, and help requests. This offers an alternative opportunity for first responders and disa...

The article " Misconception as a Barrier to Teaching about Disasters " by David E. Alexander reviews the extent of belief in the common myths about disaster held by students from the University of Massachusetts and three groups of trainee emergency workers from Italy. As the author noted correctly, it is an important subject, as " learning likely is to be inhibited severely when misconceptions ...

In response to the lessons and criticisms over the recent large-scale disasters and relief activities during the disasters, many government organizations around the world have recently launched initiatives to improve their disaster management capabilities. While a revision of disaster management capability may entail transformation of organizational structures, business processes, and technical...

AIM The purpose of this qualitative study is to provide an understanding of how Chinese nurses acted in response to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. BACKGROUND The literature has reported that Chinese nurses played a key role in the Wenchuan earthquake. Although these nurses' intentions were well meaning, and they made enormous efforts to save lives, they considered that disaster relief practice...